Monday, July 20, 2015

The Real Deal with Critical Writing

Robert
H. Ennis, author and Emeritus Professor of the University of Illinois, wrote: “Critical
thinking is reasonable and reflective thinking focused on deciding what to
believe or do.”This
was the opening line of his overview, The Nature of Critical Thinking: An
Outline of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities.

Critical
thinking gets us to extract the who’s,
what’s, when’s,
where’s, why’s,
and how’s of
any situation in an objective manner.

Let
us focus on this part of Mr. Ennis’statement: “deciding what to believe”.
The conclusions we come to after thoroughly analyzing the facts.

While
critical thinking may seem like it should be an automated task for our brains
to process, our emotionally-driven tendencies can lead us towards biased
conclusions. And this could lead to severe consequences in our personal
relationships, work environment, and important transactions.

Fortunately,
critical thinking is a skill that can be learned, and in many ways, mastered.
It is included in management trainee programs, and other employee development
workshops. Good schools also teach children about critical thinking at an early
age.

The
next step, however, can get tricky. Say we are now “masters”at
critical thinking. Our events agency was hired by a company to launch its
newest product. Everything seems to be going well. But the next day, we are
invited to meet with the clients to discuss the event in detail. We talk about
what went well, and what didn’t. It is a healthy discussion, and
everyone contributes objective points about the good (e.g. targets for initial product
orders were met) and the areas in need of improvement (e.g. food supply was
underestimated, so guests who arrived late had little to eat).

When
we get back to the office, we bump into the president of the company, who asks
for a report of the meeting.

This
is where critical writing comes into play. Equally crucial to the thinking
process is the ability to pass on the information in a straightforward,
unbiased manner.

There
are many factors that can affect our ability to write as well as we think. How
are our English writing skills? When it comes to report writing, we need to be
careful about word usage and sentence construction, as any misuse of words or
phrasing can lead to misinterpretation of the facts.

Take
this sentence for example:

The
client said he was happy about the number of initial orders that were placed
for the product.

We
should avoid using words that describe an emotion and stick to the facts.

Instead,
we could write:

Initial
target of orders was set at 200 units. By the end of the evening, 300 orders
were placed, which exceeded targets by 150%.

There
are instances, however, when critical writing is used for the purpose of
swaying audiences towards one side versus the other. We see this every day in
the news. News report writing is sometimes crafted in a way that puts the focus
on one aspect of the entire story, rather than present a more holistic view.

If
one news channel were in support of the Democratic party in the United States,
their news reports would obviously put more emphasis on the great work the
Democrats are doing, and either downplay the efforts of the Republicans, or not
talk about them at all.

Is
this fair? The answer to that depends on who you are talking to. Again, Mr.
Ennis says that critical thinking leads us to decide what to believe.

And
critical writing is the means by which we deliver the messages we want to
convey.

The
important thing to note is that by learning the skill of critical writing
alongside critical thinking, we have the ability to process all the facts as
accurately as possible, so that when it comes time to share our reports with
others, whether it be through writing an essay, writing a post-mortem report,
or delivering the news, we have the power to know how best to write it
according to our objectives.